How to avoid the wrinkle at the poles of the UV sphere?
The wrinkles are generated by the triangles that connect the pole to the rest of the mesh. Even quads with one side much longer than the other can lead to similar problems, expecially with subsurf.
My favourite way of get rid of it is to delete the pole vertex, loop select the circle, extrude and scale down until near of the center, then Ctrl+F Grid Fill.
Then select the new central pole, activate the proportional editing  with sphere falloff and grab the pole to the old position, that can be "marked" with the 3D cursor (Shift+S cursor to selected).
Then you can expand your selection with Ctrl++ and use the "smooth vertex" function in the toolshelf T.


You'll have to do some experiments: if the last circle is near the pole you'll have artifacts, if it's very distant you'll have to set the sphere "by hand", also the smooth vertex function requires some manual adjust. If you need perfect sphere use icosphere instead.